[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
I understood you fine. Your attempt to classify toxin exposure from smoking in bars as somehow being radically different from other occupational toxins backfired when you used the benzene example, and in any case does not make sense on a scientific basis.
[/QUOTE]
OK. My point is that people knowingly and voluntarily, for pleasure, within their own homes, subject themselves to a cocktail of dangerous chemicals which together form the concotion ‘tobacco smoke.’ People do not, in any large numbers, suck down 100% benzene for pleasure. That’s the difference. If you cannot see there is a difference between a person doing something willingly at home, and not minding it at work, to being exposed to something that gives them no benefit without their choice, then I think you are being deliberately obtuse.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
There never seem to be any figures to back claims like yours, but in any case it’s a moot point.
[/QUOTE]
Nice bit of selective editing on your part there, attempting to make it look like I was asserting something as an absolute truth without providing figures to back it up. In the part you chose to eliminate, to save space, I said that it was a total guess. You are right, there aren’t any surveys I have seen done on this. Do you deny it is true though? It certainly was during the long time I worked as a bartender.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
Voters, health agencies and (as an ominous looming threat) personal injury lawyers are not going to go for the idea of an unprotected class of workers who will “voluntarily” accept occupational hazards (which in your scenario would include not only bartenders but servers, cleaning staff, delivery people etc.).
I can just see your model applied in other lines of work:
“Hey there, all you smokers, heavy drinkers and dudes who love to ride motorcycles without a helmet! You live the freewheeling high-risk lifestyle, so why not come to work at the Ajax Not-Quite-Up-To-OSHA-Standards Coal Mine? We offer high pay and exciting jobs without all that cumbersome safety equipment. Apply now!!!”
Nah, somehow I don’t see that happening. :dubious:
[/QUOTE]
This is ridiculous. I have answered this earlier, but here goes again. I support allowing people to take extra risks when it is truly voluntary. There is pretty incredible evidence that people voluntarily chose to accept the risk of tobacco smoke. That evidence is the fact lots of people smoke. I see no evidence that people voluntarily would work in unsafe mining conditions if there were safe mining jobs available. It may be certain people would, but I think the risk of people being forced by economic situation to work there is unacceptably high. If there were hundreds, possibly thousands of individual mines within close distance of a city, then that system might be more acceptable. And I think if people were presented with 999 safer pits, and one unsafe pit, the unsafe pit wouldn’t have workers.
On the other hand, with lots and lots of bars around, I think it more than likely that even if the pay were exactly the same, you would find bartenders more than happy to work in smoking bars. Once again, I apologize for not having studies to back this up, and say simply that this is an opinion formed from conversations with bartenders who find the idea that they don’t actually know whether they want to work somewhere that allows them to smoke pretty insulting.
If for one moment I thought there was not a way to make this a voluntary decision, I would support the bans. But I get kind of tired of seeing people trumpeting the rights of workers to justify their own personal preferences, without actually considering what the workers they are championing would want. Not saying this category includes you, of course.
